issue 154 november 2014 Analyses: The New Government Perspectives Events: Why Healthcare Matters? Member News: Postbank, AIMS, Mtel, ContourGlobal, BCAF, Unicredit, Aurubis Thanksgiving Charity Dinner Raises 55,000 BGN American ChamberC hamber of CommerceC ommerce in BulgariaBulgaria Business Park Sofia, Mladost 4 Area, Building 2, Floor 6, 1766 Sofia Tel.: (359 2) 9742 743 Fax: (359 2) 9742 741 homepage: www.amcham.bg e-mail:
[email protected] editorial Dear Reader, Imagine yourself relaxing with your tablet in the living room; suddenty, just before midnight, you catch a glimpse of the muted television. You see a virologist dressed up in protective gear like Dustin Hofman in “Outbreak,” and a running caption: Ebola in Bulgaria*. Chief expert on Viruses in the Sofia Military Hospital professor Kamen Plochev speaking in front of TV cameras at the moment the ebola-suspected patient was hospitalized. I got a tad panicked, to be honest, but by the time I got to increasing the volume with the remote, the news pro- gram had moved on to another item. Since there were no current events shows on any of the other channels, I went online in search of information. This turned out to be a heart-attack-inducing mistake, because Bulgaria’s news sites have the tendency to exaggerate every bit of suspicion into a near-Apocalyspe. A half-maybe uttered in some ministry becomes “certain to happen;” every random word by a low-level bureucrat is treated as “official statement.” This is the end of journalism as we know it, since Bulgaria’s online and even mainstream media seem to have forgotten some of the cardinal rules of reporting.